WOMEN CANTORS FIND GRADUAL ACCEPTANCE

As a woman cantor, Elaine Shapiro has become a master of the quick comeback.

"If a rabbi's wife is a rebbetzin, what do you call a woman cantor's husband?" a temple member once asked her.

"Lucky!" she shot back.

"What if you get pregnant?" another asked.

"I'll have a baby," she answered.

After enduring years as a novelty in a largely male ministry -- chanting the traditional prayers during Jewish worship -- Shapiro is suddenly finding widespread approbation. In May, the prestigious Cantors Assembly admitted her and 13 others as its first female members. Further, it decided to start commissioning liturgical music specifically for women's voices.

"I've been waiting for this for 18 years -- including 10 years before I got my diploma," says Shapiro, cantor of Temple Sinai in Delray Beach and the only female Cantors Assembly member in Florida.

With 420 members, the assembly is the largest group of American cantors, with Reform and Orthodox members as well as Conservative. As clergy, cantors not only sing the prayers at temple services but also officiate at weddings and funerals. In addition, they counsel and often teach in a temple's Religious School. And the cantorate is one divine job with relative earthly reward: Starting salaries usually top $40,000.

Why admit them to the Assembly now? Cantor Samuel Rosenbaum, its executive vice president, puts it simply: "The time has come. My grandfather would not have wanted women cantors. But once we ordained women rabbis (with Amy Eilberg in 1985), it seemed strange not to let them be cantors."

With 70 members, Reform women cantors are now the most numerous. And many applaud the decision to write music as a proof that the assembly's acceptance is more than tokenism.

"It will make music comfortable for women, so they can be heard in the best vocal setting," says Cantor Rochelle Nelson of Temple Beth Am in Miami. One of the few formally trained cantors in South Florida besides Shapiro, she graduated in 1984 from Hebrew Union College in New York, which houses the main Reform cantorial school.

"If they hadn't been willing to do that, it would have sent a message that women are welcome only on men's ground," Nelson adds. "This says women are an asset to the field."

The New York-based Cantorial Assembly will ask four or five composers to submit pieces, then have women try them out. Most likely, the first tunes will be rearrangements of existing music, Rosenbaum says.

"We've set no real rules for this, but we want to preserve tradition," he says. "We don't want any way-out things, at least at the moment. But if a composer wants to try something original, we'll have a look at it."

One possible theme, he suggests, is women heroes of Jewish history. Good Jews, for instance, know all about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but may forget Sarah, Rachel and Rebecca.

Rosenbaum also plans to consult the 14 new assembly members on what they want. What he will find, if he talks with Shapiro, is that there is a preference for the middle-upper register, from A to D above middle C. And for less of the coloratura style, a rippling series of notes popular at cantorial concerts. "Too operatic," Shapiro says.

Nelson, who has written 25 pieces herself -- three of them published by Hebrew Union College -- recommends that the music be a bit simpler, easier for the congregation to sing along. "The music has traditionally been written in solo style, but congregants no longer want to hear a cantor do a performance. It's best to think of keeping in the midrange."

Of course, many women cantors already have been forced to rewrite the liturgies in their own keys. With 99 percent of Jewish liturgical music written for men, especially tenors, the women have been forced either to transpose the music or sing unnaturally high or low.

"When I had worked a year in a synagogue, people would say my voice had gotten a lot lower," says Cantor Nancy Hausman, who worked at two synagogues, including Beth Orr in Coral Springs, before becoming the administrator at the Reform-linked American Conference of Cantors in Paramus, N.J. "I didn't overcome as much as accustom myself."

Being a woman cantor does have some physical limits, as Shapiro discovered when she began bearing children (she has three). Each time, she lost the top three notes of her range -- unwittingly finding the answer for the joker who asked what she'd do if she became pregnant.

She thinks, though, that her work may have actually improved in another way during her pregnancies. "I knew a child was inside me, getting the benefit of hearing the services. I felt wonderful."

Early on, though, not everyone felt as wonderful about it as she.

"At first people treated me as a novelty," Shapiro says of her early days at Temple Beth El in West Palm Beach back in 1978. "They came in droves to hear what a woman cantor sounded like. The people who prepared the oneg (a reception after the Sabbath service) complained."

In fact, the Talmud, the authoritative Jewish commentary on the Bible, banned women from being cantors because their voices were "erotic" and might distract men from worship. The ancient rabbis also questioned whether a menstruating woman could "keep the purity of Torah."

The Cantors Assembly decided, however, that the Torah was inherently pure and could not be defiled, and that women's voices were not inherently erotic, Rosenbaum says. He points out that the Talmud, revered as it is, was written largely by males.

"Judaism even then was respectful of women, but the attitude was that women should be in their place," he adds. "That was the attitude of that society. We've voiced the attitude of ours -- that you need the whole orchestra."

Which, of course, is music to the women's ears.

"I don't know how a man feels," Nelson says. "But I know that a beautiful voice, male or female, will bring people to synagogue."